Menu

And the future is

The Future of Digital by Business Insider is one of the best slide decks I’ve seen in a long time – aimed at readers online it has great visuals WITH sources and references (hallelujah and the angels sang).

Digital as a medium is now ~20 years old. So how are we doing?

There are over 2 billion people online with 2/3 of the world left to go. However most of the money is already online. So the market is more mature than you think.

Meanwhile, something profound happened last year… PC growth stalled.

Smartphone sales blew past PC sales and tablets are now driving all the growth in the personal computer market. The future is mobile, but globally, we’re still early, growth slows after 50% penetration.

Most future US smartphone buyers will be older and poorer (for me that means progress – it’s now more accessible and easier to use). The focus is now on markets like China which now accounts for ~25% of smartphone sales (and is already twice the size of the US market)

Remember when they said no one would ever pay for content?

Digital content revenues are exploding including newspapers such as the NY Times and Wall Street Journal (see slide 24) although digital dollars don’t offset lost print dollars (slide 33) and Freemium is still the dominant model on smart phones.

Digital advertising is still growing rapidly – for some companies 40% of ad revenue is digital.

Amazon ad revenue is already over one billion dollars a year.

Mobile factoids

Did you know that Google completely owns mobile search? – I didn’t.

App store downloads on pace to hit 60 billion by mid-2013

and the biggest money makers on smart phones are…… games

Android, not Apple, has the largest smartphone platform globally partly because it owns China (slides 114-5)

but Apple is dominating app revenue and most commerce and web traffic is from Apple. In fact mobile profits are going mainly to two players – Apple and Samsung.

There is lots of other good stuff here. Take a look (click on the Future of Digital Link here or in the slide deck to go direct to it).

Categories

Recent Posts: Matt's Notes

Every year, around ANZAC Day, I share a thought on social media for my Great Grandfather William James Roseland, who perished in France during the ‘Great War’. The greatest sadness for me is the photo below, a loving father with his brand new baby boy who never saw each other again. Today, August 14 2018, […]

Building an International School in the Middle East is not without its complications. Local labour laws, Municipality regulations and Ministry rules provide a plethora of hurdles and hoops to jump through. Then there is the challenge of combining the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum with the Omani Arabic program, whilst ensuring that you maintain an even […]